Fibre channel is a high performance serial link supporting its own, as well as higher-level protocols such as the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI), and Internet Policy Institute (IPI) protocols. Fibre channel is often used as a transport mechanism in storage area networks (SANs) in which personal computers and servers are connected to storage devices and other peripherals through a fibre channel transport. By moving storage to a SAN, administrators have the means and the bandwidth to share and allocate storage to a much larger audience on a network. The fibre channel transport mechanism is used because it allows for fast transfers of large amounts of information to and from nodes of a SAN.
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (serial ATA) devices (e.g., SATA hard drives) are typically used as storage devices in personal computers. Consequently, serial ATA devices are manufactured in very high volumes. Fibre channel devices (e.g., specialized fibre channel hard drives based on the SCSI standard) are manufactured in low volumes, because they are primarily used in SAN environments. As a result, serial ATA devices tend to be less costly than fibre channel devices because of reasons including the economies of scale achieved through higher volume production of serial ATA devices. For example, component costs for serial ATA devices typically cost 3-5 times less than the cost of components for fibre channel devices. Furthermore, serial ATA is a serial link that includes a single cable with a minimum of four wires to create a point-to-point connection between devices. Transfer rates for serial ATA begin at 150 MBps. One of the main design advantages of serial ATA is a thinner serial cable that facilitates more efficient airflow inside a form factor and also allows for smaller chassis designs.
Serial ATA devices cannot work in environments where fibre channel is used as a transport mechanism, because the fibre channel standard does not support serial ATA protocols. As such, administrators are forced to learn and maintain support for both fibre channel devices and serial ATA devices. Since SAN and fibre channel devices form a “network behind the server”, different from a typical Ethernet network, training and management costs are not leveraged off the resources required for maintaining the typical Ethernet network. Furthermore, administrators are unable to use more cost effective serial ATA devices in a fibre channel environment. As such, administrators are unable to realize cost savings of serial ATA devices in a fibre channel environment.